London Boulevard

Let's see what we have here.  London Boulevard is the directorial debut of William Monahan, Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Departed.  That sounds good.  Of course, he also wrote Edge of Darkness, which included radioactive children, which is less good.  On the other hand, Colin Farrell is in it, and I've really enjoyed him in the last few things I've seen him in (Fright Night and In Bruges), which almost completely makes up for how awful he was at the beginning of his career.  The supporting cast includes the always reliable Ray Winstone, the considerably less consistent David Thewlis, and the adorable Anna Friel.  Keira Knightley plays Farrell's romantic interest, too; while I'm not a big fan, Knightley isn't a bad actress --- she just seems to act in movies I don't want to watch.  When you add all that up, London Boulevard sounds like a pretty solid movie, if not a good one.  And yet, it took a year after its European release for the film to have a limited theatrical run in America.  Is this a misunderstood diamond in the rough, or is this (in the parlance of the UK) just some shite that should have gone direct to DVD? 

After being released from prison, Mitchell (Colin Farrell) is immediately picked up and reintroduced to the shady criminals that got him in trouble in the first place.  Mitchell didn't rat anybody out --- in fact, he's a bit of a legend for being a bad-ass --- so he's not going to get snuffed, but he's tired of that life and wants to move on.  Somehow, Mitchell manages to get a job as a bodyguard for reclusive actress/British tabloid fodder, Charlotte (Keira Knightley).  Charlotte has developed a bit of an anxiety disorder thanks to the constant badgering she has received from the paparazzi; I would say she is paranoid, but they really are out to get her, since the worse she gets, the better their headlines.

She doesn't seem overexposed at all

Taking care of Charlotte is surprisingly rewarding for Mitchell.  Aside from developing friendships that don't revolve around secrecy and being paid --- hold on...okay, his new gig isn't that different from his days as a thug.  Whatever.  Mitchell and Charlotte fall in love, the end.  Or not.  You see, ever since Mitchell got spung from the pokey, local crime boss Rob Gant (Ray Winstone) has been pestering Mitchell to flex some of that infamous bad-assery on his behalf.  Mitchell has refused politely and less politely, but Gant isn't the sort who takes "no" for an answer.  So who will come out on top in the end, gangster Mitchell or reformed Mitchell?

None of the acting in London Boulevard was too bad, but the leads weren't especially impressive.  Colin Farrell did about as much with the role as the script would allow, but the story relies heavily on him being totally bad-ass, and we don't see a whole lot of that.  Keira Knightley was fine as the strung-out celebrity, but her role was surprisingly small, given the initial movie trailer.

Rumor is Keira gained 1.5 lbs to play this role; that rumor may be exaggerated

While I didn't care for the individual performances by Farrell or Knightley, they did show some chemistry together, mostly due to Farrell being understated.  Luckily, the lack of overwhelming charm and charisma from the two headlining stars is more than made up by two stellar supporting performances.  David Thewlis played a habitually stoned manager/hanger-on of Charlotte, and he was great.  What I liked about him was how well he played up the nonchalance of a habitual drug user, without being over-the-top at all. 

This is easily the best work I've seen from Thewlis, although considering his non-Harry Potter career, that's not saying much.  Ray Winstone is great at playing tough guys, and this role was right in his wheelhouse (sorry, I've been playing a lot of MLB12: The Show).  Loud, violent, and scary: that's all you need to know about his performance here.  There are a lot of recognizable faces in the rest of the cast, but the only one who stood out was Ben Chaplin as a sniveling and stupid crook; it wasn't a great part, but Chaplin was suitably unsympathetic.  Stephen Graham and Eddie Marsan were both underutilized in small parts.  Anna Friel was almost completely unnecessary in what could have been a fun bit part, but just felt out of place in London Boulevard.

As William Monahan's first directorial feature, London Boulevard does a decent amount of things right.  The best scenes in the movie --- basically any time Farrell shares the screen with Thewlis or Winstone --- are snappy, well-edited and pretty awesome.  The violence is also fairly raw and abrasive (in a good way).

"I'm an artist at my chosen craft"

And yet, London Boulevard is a huge mess.  The first thing you'll notice is the variety and thickness of the British accents in the film; I enjoy the Brits, but even I had a hard time figuring out what was being said at times.  Worse, Monahan's adapted screenplay is all over the place.  The trailer makes this movie look pretty promising.  A tough guy trying to get out of the criminal life and protect his new life with the woman he loves.  Nothing wrong with that, at the very least, and it has the potential for greatness.  But here's the thing: this movie really isn't about that.  It's more of an odyssey for Mitchell as he adjusts to non-criminal life.  The subplot featuring his sister was absolutely useless.  The extended subplot featuring Mitchell's homeless buddy would have been useless, if not for the cheap shot it provides at the end of the film.  But what is worse, a useless subplot, or a seemingly unimportant part of the movie coming back at the very, very end and suddenly being improbably important?  And then there is the bit about the crooked parole officer, and the technical owner of a certain house...there's just a lot going on, but not in a fast-paced crime caper kind of way.  Chunks of this movie work, but they don't actually connect to each other in a narrative or thematic fashion.

That disconnect is really at the core of what keeps London Boulevard from working.  There are some good bits (the familiar overarching plot, the snappy banter in key scenes), but the pacing of the film as a whole is awful.  The story gets sidetracked by subplots with little to no payoff, Mitchell is attached to certain characters for reasons the viewer never really understands, and the core of the story --- Mitchell and Charlotte falling in love --- is rushed and left mostly unexplored and unexplained.

That's enough of that!

How do you screw up a British gangster movie with so much talent in the film?  By not focusing on the "gangster" part and not letting the talent interact with each other, I suppose.  I was already sorely disappointed in the film when it suddenly sealed the deal and earned my ire. 

I'd be pissed, too, if I starred in this

SPOILER ALERT: Mitch has just gone out of his way to keep himself and Charlotte safe, and he's leaving her house to get on a plane and meet up with her.  And then he gets the shit stabbed out of him.  Not by any of the famous actors in the cast, or even someone with a speaking part up to this point, but by a kid.  You see, Mitch gave his homeless buddy a knife to protect himself, the homeless guy gets beaten to death, and word on the street is that a kid did the deed; Mitch tracked the kid down and was seconds away from murdering him, but he stopped, presumably because he made a choice to change.  And then that stupid kid stabs him to death with his own knife, out of nowhere.  That...that is just awful.  It may not be the worst ending I've seen, but it is, at the very least, complete bullshit.  If the movie had been good up to that point, I would have been seriously upset, so at least London Boulevard made sure you had lost interest before doing something so stupid. 

For the record, that is one star each for David Thewlis and Ray Winstone.  The rest of this movie can curl up and die, for all I care.

Season of the Witch

I was going to pass over Season of the Witch --- mostly because it looked horrid --- but I saw Chris Gore's quick review of it and my interest was piqued by the words "zombie monks."  Admittedly, that is not a phrase that is often accompanied by "the Academy Award-winning performance of," but Nicolas Cage fighting zombie monks should have been hilarious.  Not hilarious enough, as it turns out.

When, exactly, is Witching Season?  Right after duck season?  Actually, the Season of the Witch takes place during the Crusades of the mid-1300s.  Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) are bad-ass knights that love to slaughter heretics.  We know this because the two basically tell the camera in so many words.  You'll have to take their word for it, since the large action sequences aren't very convincing.

I find it hard to believe that anyone reached age 60 in the Crusades, much less a knight

After killing in the name of (DA-DA!  DUM!) God for many years, Behmen and Felson decided to quit the team after they invaded a castle and found themselves slaughtering defenseless women and children.  The resident war-priest guy argued that there's no crying in baseball the Crusades, but nobody kept the pair from walking slowly off into the sunset.  The end.  Ha!  If only!  Behmen and Felson walk back to Behmen's hometown in Germany, only to find the area stricken with dead and bloated plague bodies.

Co-starring Christopher Lee's plague corpse!

Knowing that Crusades-quitters are outlaws, the pair enter the nearest city with the intent of buying horses to take them to Felson's hometown; ever-careful to not be identified, Behmen wears a mask over his face (which doesn't attract attention at all) and Felson wears a hood (except when he doesn't).  Despite these precautions, the men are identified as Crusades-quitters when Behmen allows a clumsy child to handle the only thing in his possession that would identify him as a Crusades-quitter. 

"Okay, maybe I should have thought that one through."

The pair get locked up in a dungeon and await their inevitable hanging for treason.  Or is it inevitable?  The town has captured a young girl that they claim is a witch.  Obviously, a witch being in the same place the plague is means that the witch cursed the land.  Just as obviously, the witch needs to be immediately killed taken to a remote colony of monks, who will put her on trial for witchcraft.  The town is a little short on brave men that can travel across the dangerous German landscape unscathed, so Behmen and Felson get a chance to clear their names.  Of course, it's not that simple.  Witchcrafted wolves and dangerous bridges stand in their way, but Behmen, Felson, the supposed witch, and a few others are off to monkland!

"I've reason to believe we both will be received in Monkland"

Sounds like an acting tour de force, eh?  Yeah, well...this was never going to be a great film, so I went into this with low expectations.  Ron Perlman was decently likable.  Robert Sheehan was kind of annoying as the d'Artagnon of the witch-escorting-party, but he's not so bad that you'll remember his performance the next day.  Claire Foy had a terrible character to play, but she still wasn't very good.  On the plus side, she is about the only person in the cast who looked dirty enough to be in the 14th century.

Surprisingly clean hair, though

Stephen Graham was mediocre in a small supporting role and Stephen Campell Moore was similarly bland as the witch-escort's resident priest.  I was kind of disappointed by their performances, because I have enjoyed them in bit parts in the past; I guess I was hoping that some British charm would help make this movie more entertaining. 

Stephen Campbell Moore witnessing Nicolas Cage overacting for the first time

But that was not to be.  This movie stars Nicolas Cage, and far from his best work.  I have seen Cage do good work in the past, and I have seen him be flamboyantly (and entertainingly) silly.  This is the other Nicolas Cage, the one who thinks he's in a serious movie.  It's not that he's terrible.  I thought he matched the tone of the film just fine; that's only a problem when the movie's tone is shitty.  I've seen him act worse, but Season of the Witch really could have used a less subdued and more ridiculously overacting Nic Cage.

"You want me to overact more?"  I know, I know.

The fact of the matter is that Season of the Witch is about as fun to watch as watching plague blister pus dry.  Why is that?  Director Dominic Sena is no stranger to stupid movies, but at least he usually has the sense to be completely goofy or have Halle Berry take her top off to distract audiences.  This movie is just dull.  The battle scenes in the beginning were tepid, the horror angle never really pays off, and there is no suspense.  This isn't the most incompetent directing job I have ever seen, but it is an impressive blend of disappointing special effects, a lousy script, cheesy acting and boring plot.

...And then there are the frequent story and visual parallels between Season of the Witch and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal.  If absolutely nothing else, I will say that Sena was bold to invite comparison between this mess and a classic film.  "Bold" isn't always a smart choice, though.  Witch takes a lot of cosmetic similarities --- two men return from the Crudades (disillusioned) to a plague-ridden homeland, the men form a traveling group in the woods, there is a potentially wrongly accused witch being transported through the woods in a wooden cage, etc. --- and tries to twist its premise into an action/fantasy film.  It could have worked (somewhat) with a better script or better special effects, but the constant reminders of a better film just make Season of the Witch seem that much worse.  On the other hand, it was pretty freaking hilarious to see just how heavy-handed the parallels were.

There is something worth noting about this film, but I have to warn you...SPOILER ALERT: Season of the Witch has no witches in it.  Ha!  HA!  That's almost funny enough to make up for the rest of the film.  That's right, the supposed witch is really a demon.  What a twist!  And that's worse because...um...well, it's the first time demons are mentioned in the story, so...I'm not sure.  The witchy-demon does animate monk corpses to fight our heroes, which is awesome in theory.  In practice, the special effects and lack of suspense or horror ruined that seemingly foolproof plot element.  Oh, well.  While that is remarkably stupid, it's not enough to make up for the rest of the movie.  It is good enough for one star, though, and I did enjoy one of the death scenes and I laughed whenever it compared itself to The Seventh Seal.  It's not much, but you take what you can get from witches.

Here's a live recording from Liars, from their witch-themed album, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

I don't know your feelings about the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but I enjoyed the first film and found the second and third ones to be nigh-unwatchable.  The prospects of this, the fourth film in the series, being good are obviously slim, but I have a soft spot for Johnny Depp and I don't usually hold summer blockbusters to terribly high standards; all I ask for is that this be a fun watch.

For those familiar with the other movies, your knowledge will do you no good in this movie --- it requires absolutely no previous knowledge of these characters.  And that's a good thing.  There are only three returning characters (Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, and Gibbs), as the writers wisely decided to leave Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy and the rest bobbing somewhere else for a change.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that Jack Sparrow --- who worked extremely well as a supporting character, but lost his appeal as he got more and more screen time --- is the main character in this movie.

Two characters, one wardrobe.

Here's the nuts and bolts of the plot.  A man, who by all rights should be dead, is caught in the fishing net of some Spaniards.  He apparently has information as to the whereabouts of the Fountain of Youth.  And the race is on!  I hope you didn't grow attached to that informative sailor, because he never shows up again.  The Spanish immediately set sail and, somehow, the British happen to be preparing an expedition as well.  And, as coincidence would have it, so is Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his daughter, Angela (Penelope Cruz).  AND Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has been searching for the Fountain in his free time, too.  Since he has a map to the Fountain (which has apparently done him no good so far), Jack is targeted by the British and the other pirates.  The Spanish apparently either don't know about Jack, or saw At World's End and want nothing to do with him.  Since this is a pirate movie, Jack ends up with the pirate team, although his allegiances are nothing if not fluid.  There are a few things that have to be collected to reach the Fountain (it's over two hours long, you know), like a mermaid's tear and some cups, but that's the gist of the plot.

While the plot is somewhat less convoluted this time out, the acting hasn't noticeably improved since Part Three.  Johnny Depp still has all his fey mannerisms, but the character of Jack Sparrow loses his novelty in the spotlight.  The dialogue isn't great, so Depp doesn't have a whole lot to make his character seem fresh, likable or particularly funny.  Penelope Cruz is about as good as you might expect her to be in an English-speaking role; she's very pretty, but her acting is wooden.  There is a romantic subplot between her character and Depp's, but it never actually implies much passion and, therefore, is not very convincing. 

Sparrow and Blackbeard trading beard-braiding tips.

I thought Ian McShane did a pretty decent job as the evil Blackbeard, but his dialogue was also lacking punch.  Sure, McShane seemed evil, but that's not a stretch for him --- he could do that while riding a unicorn that craps rainbows and candy.  And, yes, I get that this series has always had a bit of the supernatural in it, but I didn't really need Blackbeard to be scary because he has super-pirate-ship powers.  That's just kind of lame and completely (although thankfully and hilariously) unexplained.  Geoffrey Rush returns as Captain Barbossa, for reasons I am not entirely clear on. 

"I feel pretty and witty and wise...!"

He does have a peg leg (filled with booze!) in this movie, which is a first (I think) for this series.  As good as Rush was in the first film, he is nowhere near as sinister this time around.  I like the idea of a pirate being accepted by the British Navy (it makes historical sense, too), but that wasn't enough to justify his inclusion in a fourth movie in the series.  Stephen Graham (Snatch, Gangs of New York) takes up the semi-moronic pirate role that was vacated by...well, many cast members from the last movie.  I liked him just fine, but he bounced between being idiotic and surprisingly swashbuckling at the drop of a (pirate) hat.  Kevin McNally returns as Sparrow's buddy, Gibbs, and was as likable in his small part as he usually is.  This film also introduces a boring (but thankfully shirtless, am I right, ladies?) Bible-thumper (Sam Claflin, in his feature film debut), a possibly not man-eating mermaid (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), a definitely man-eating mermaid (Gemma Ward), and a dashing but underused Oscar Jaenada (from The Losers).  Keith Richards makes a cameo appearance, as does Harry Potter's mean uncle, Richard Griffiths.  The acting's not bad, but the new additions aren't enough to balance out the predictable hijinks of the returning characters.

Director Rob Marshall is more famous for musicals than he is action/adventure movies, but I thought that his music video-esque editing made sense for a good portion of this film.  Of course, since I wasn't a fan of the acting, I can't be a huge fan of Marshall's direction.  Directors need to direct their talent, you know.  The film looked pretty good, though, with a lot of sweeping vistas and gorgeous scenes.  Marshall opted for more subtle use of CGI in this film (no octopus-faced villains here), which I appreciated.  While there is an awful lot of swashbuckling going on in this film, I wasn't too impressed by it.  Marshall didn't do a great job putting those fight scenes on camera in an exciting way.  He did do a good job with Jack Sparrow's predictably elaborate and goofy escape attempts, though.  These scenes were sometimes eye-roll-worthy, but I think they still looked pretty good.

I definitely appreciated some of the choices made in this movie, even if they didn't lead to cinematic greatness.  I like that the plot was taken from the book On Stranger Tides, instead of completely manufactured; I hated the plot of the last two films and thought that there were some good ideas in this story, even if they weren't executed very well.  I thought the mermaids were an interesting concept that was almost done well; they were all sexy and deadly, but I hated that every pirate and sailor knew about them and none dismissed mermaids as fiction.  I liked that the relationship between the captured mermaid and the Bible guy was kept as a very supporting plot; I didn't care about them at all, so having their story progress quickly was a blessing.  And how about the use of voodoo zombies?  That was a pretty cool idea.

Sadly, those quasi-compliments can't save this movie.  Jack Sparrow is getting tiresome, despite the best efforts of Disney's writers --- what makes him work in the first film is how dangerous and evil the audience thinks he can be, and the humor comes from him undercutting that malice.  By now, Sparrow is seen as a pretty nice guy and is just a clever/silly Keith Richards impersonator here.  The movie felt long, largely because the fist half was pretty boring.  The second half picked up quite a bit by shifting its focus frequently between the many subplots, but the first half just dragged as everything was set up.  I hated hated hated the use of the Spanish in this movie; they play a very important part (theoretically) and are barely used.  I don't understand how Penelope Cruz's character could be a passionate pirate-lover, a wannabe nun, and a swashbuckling sailor, and yet have none of that manifest itself onscreen.  And why on the hell is Juan Ponce de Leon's ship stuck in the side of a mountain?  And wasn't he looking for the Fountain of Youth in Florida?  Where exactly are the mountains of Florida?  Those last two issues could have been nipped in the bud with any explanation whatsoever, but this movie doesn't like to bother with details like that.

I don't mind that this movie is trying to be a brain-dead romp, but I do mind that I wasn't entertained by it.  It came close on many occasions, but ultimately fell short.  Still, shockingly, it is clearly the second-best Pirates of the Caribbean.

Snatch

Most of the time, when there is a heist in a film, it is the focus of the plot.  That makes sense, after all; most normal people don't commit high-stakes armed robbery, so it provides a little escapism for audiences.  Of course, there have been notable films where the robbery was not the focal point, but still an important part of the script.  In the case of Reservoir Dogs, the heist isn't in the movie, but the plot focuses on the aftermath of a robbery gone wrong.  Snatch is a little different, though.  Yes, there is a robbery.  Technically, the same item is stolen several times.  But this is a movie that is more about the awesomeness of incoherent gypsies than it is about any heist.

Snatch is one of those ensemble movies where a dozen or more characters have intersecting plot lines that twist and turn all over the place, so summarizing the plot is perhaps not the best way to describe this movie.  There are only two constants in this plot.  First, New York gangster Avi (Dennis Farina) wants to get his hands on the diamond he hired Frankie Four Fingers (Benicio del Toro) to steal from Antwerp, but he's not the only one who knows that the jewel is in Frankie's possession.  Second, local crime lord Brick Top (Alan Ford) needs competition for his illegal (and known to be crooked) underground boxing matches; he sets his sights on an honest local manager, Turkish (Jason Statham), who needs to deliver a good fight for Brick Top, or quite possibly die a gruesome death.  Everything else feeds into those two seemingly separate plots.

While that actually sums up the plot decently well, I can't review Snatch and not mention the myriad colorful characters sprinkled throughout.  While I wouldn't say that any of these characters are well-developed or sympathetic, most of them are entertaining.  The highlight of the film definitely comes from the "fookin' pikeys," which is a rude British term for Irish Travelers (you know...gypsies); Mickey (Brad Pitt) leads the group of dirty, swindling, and heavy-drinking gamblers, with Jason Flemyng playing his number two.  The pikeys are almost impossible to understand, which adds to their unwashed charm.

The next best characters are probably the duo of Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) and Boris the Blade, AKA Boris the Bullet Dodger (Rade Serbedzija); both are notoriously hard to kill, both are pretty bad-ass, and they each have several memorable moments in the movie.  Beyond them, there is an assortment of lesser characters, like the group of inept criminals hired to rob Frankie Four Fingers (including Robbie Gee and Lennie James), Turkish's partner Tommy (Stephen Graham) and a snitch (Ewen Bremner).

While it is billed as a crime picture, this is really more of a comedy than anything else.  Sure, there's some action, but it is not the focus; the initial diamond heist took about two minutes of film time and even the final boxing match is only about five minutes long.  The characters flash across the screen quickly, as does the plot, with everything slowing down only for jokes.  Unfortunately, many of those jokes aren't very good.  Well, to be fair, they're not real jokes; they're regular dialogue that is supposed to stick out and be funny.  Sometimes, this works out great.  Anything with Brad Pitt speaking is great.  Most of Vinnie Jones' lines are good, especially his explanation for how Boris the Bullet Dodger got his nickname.  Dennis Farina was also very entertaining whenever he got to be overly rude.  But for every great moment, there is at least one joke that truly fails.  They fall into a category that I like to call "repeater jokes."  You have one character saying the same thing (maybe with slight variations) several times, with other characters reacting to it with increasing exasperation; you can inverse the gag, but it's even worse.  Here's an example: Jason Statham asks a guy when the sausages will be done cooking, he is told two minutes; he asks again, and is told two minutes; he asks again and is told five minutes; Jason, frustrated, explains that it was two minutes five minutes ago.  If you're not on the floor with tears in your eyes after reading that, then you agree with me: not funny, guys.  I also found the inept criminals annoying, too, but the repeater jokes are just awful.  They're not funny and they slow the flow of an otherwise fast-paced film.

This was the second film Guy Ritchie directed, and he throws everything he has at the screen.  Slow motion, freeze frames, fast motion, a weird underwater effect, all while moving the camera all over the place.  It makes for a pretty kinetic movie, even when not much is going on, plot-wise.  You can justly critique his style as resembling Attention Deficit Disorder, but as long as the plot is chugging along, his style fits the film.  I'm not quite sure about Ritchie and his handling of actors, though.  He is probably a fun guy to be around, judging from all the actors that recur in his films, but he doesn't have much sense for timing anything but action, as we see when he slows down to tell unfunny jokes.

The acting is mostly entertaining, although nobody is really great in their part.  Brad Pitt is the film's shining performance, managing to be very likable despite being greasy, bearded, and speaking gibberish.  Aside from Pitt, I particularly enjoyed Vinnie Jones, Dennis Farina, and Rade Serbedzija; all of them played well within their comfort zones (criminals), but they were all darned good at it.  I'm not terribly familiar with Alan Ford, but I've liked him quite a bit in both of his Guy Ritchie movies, even if a large part of that like comes solely from his vulgar dialogue.  Oh, and Benicio del Toro was good is his bit role, but I was disappointed by just how small his part ended up being.  I was surprised to see Jason Statham play such an inconsequential part of the story; despite narrating the film, his character doesn't really do much to propel the plot.  In retrospect, it is also shocking that he doesn't fight a single person in this, his big American film debut, and he even manages to keep his shirt on for the whole movie.

So far, I think I can justly sum up Snatch as being a fast-paced crime caper with a focus on humor and eccentric characters.  It's not a deep film, but it's fun, even when it sabotages its momentum with repeater jokes.  On its own merits, this is kind of like the movie equivalent of junk food; it is enjoyable, but ultimately full of empty calories.  When you take a broader look at this film, though, you will see striking similarities to Ritchie's first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  I'm not talking about having Vinnie Jones, Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, and Alan Ford in both movies, Matthew Vaughn as a producer, or even the fact that John Murphy did the score for both films.  The look and feel of both movies is nearly identical.  The way things end in both films is pretty similar, too.  Even the basic premise of a slightly crooked, but good, guy getting in over his head with a violent gangster is repeated.  Heck, Vinnie Jones' first scenes in both movies are barely distinguishable.  Snatch feels like an attempt to recreate Ritchie's breakthrough picture, but with Hollywood actors.  As such, most people like whichever movie they saw first, which is a shame; Snatch is funnier, but less consistent and less focused.

Having gotten that off my chest, I must admit that I still enjoy Snatch.  Yes, it's basically a repeat of a movie I really like.  Yes, it is all over the place, in terms of plot and characters.  No, I don't really care about any of the characters as anything other than props for action and foul-mouthed jokes.  But it is a damned good time, and it makes me laugh every time.

 This review was done by request.  So, there...service with a smile!